Month: August 2015

This week marks the 124th anniversary of the slave uprising in Haiti, which played an important role in the abolition of chattel slavery. Sunday, August 23rdis the UNESCO International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition. It is a day where the world is asked to pause and consider the legacy of slavery and the power of social movements like abolitionism.

Growing up in the US American South as a white child, I learned about slavery in particular ways. Living in the midst of battlefields, patriotic statues of Civil War generals, and family stories of burying silver as Sherman’s troops approached, shaped me in unknown ways. The cotton fields of my childhood were a visual reminder of the back-breaking labor that had fueled the economy, not just of the southern states but the whole country in its early years. Slavery was an embarrassing history lesson in which my ancestors had fought on the losing side of the American Civil War.

As I got older, I read slave narratives and histories of slavery, watched documentaries and movies and visited museums where I saw the instruments used to torture people on a regular basis. As I learned more about the brutal reality of slavery, I realized that my understanding of it had been deeply shaped by my experience of being white.

As a white woman, I wondered how my ancestors answered the questions of racial justice in their time and in what ways my life has been affected and even enriched by the hardships and injustice that were suffered by enslaved Africans. I wondered if anyone in my family had owned slaves.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter if my ancestors owned slaves. After all, my privilege as a white woman in the U.S. in the 21st century is real, whether my ancestors owned slaves or not. The horror of slavery transcends race and nationality in much the same way that genocide anywhere is a stain on the human community.

I vividly remember the palpable feeling of the moral evil that emanates through the slave castle of Elmina in Ghana and the slave chambers near the Zanzibar slave market. As I walked through the “Door of No Return” that leads down to the tiny holding room in Elmina where hundreds of people were forced to wait for the boats that took them to the Caribbean and North America; I became a living witness to the horror of what human beings are capable of doing to one another.

Looking around that damp, dark, and death-filled space where unspeakable evil occurred for over 300 years, I thought about the fact that it was white Christians who built castles like Elmina and who perpetrated and profited from the slave trade for centuries. White Christians, who were quite possibly my ancestors, sold and traded their brothers and sisters while worshiping together in churches that often sanctioned and blessed the trafficking in human flesh. Their wealth and prosperity and the wealth of their countries was built up through the sin of human exploitation and oppression.

Acknowledging the moral depravity that was complicit in the existence and promotion of slavery as well as the Christian justification for slavery is an essential foundation for thinking about the contemporary problems of racial injustice that shape life in many countries around the world. Whether or not my ancestors owned slaves, I am accountable for my complicity in the racial injustice in the world today. Knowing and teaching about the slave trade is important in a world that is still rife with racial disparity. The crippling poverty of contemporary Haiti can only be understood in the context of the political history of the Haitian people. Likewise, the “Black Lives Matter” movement in the United States must be read against the historical backdrop of slavery and its legacy in which black lives have not mattered nearly enough.

When my father died fifteen years ago, I came across a faded newspaper clipping that mentioned that a distant ancestor of mine had owned a slave. While this fact was only a passing reference in the article, it’s the only thing I remember.

I do not know the ways in which slave-owning benefited my ancestors or what ways it may have contributed to my own class privilege. Certainly, the fact that one of my distant ancestors owned a slave does not make me culpable for his actions. What does matter is that, as a white woman, I develop a racial consciousness that recognizes the relationship between historical oppression and contemporary injustice; a racial consciousness that can identify the ways in which my Christian faith has been used to oppress black people and to justify slavery; a racial consciousness that propels me to fight against the contemporary racial injustices in our world.

Remembering the slave trade and the abolitionist movement is particularly important for historically white churches in countries that were part of the slave trade during the WCC Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace. We must remember and lament our complicity in the slave trade because our memory and our grief honor the countless victims who suffered and lost their lives. This lamentation is particularly important in contexts, like the Southern United States, where a glorification of the “Old South” seeks to gloss over the atrocities of our history under the guise of “celebrating our heritage.” The horrific murders at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC this summer can only be understood in the context of racial hatred that simmers beneath support for the Confederate flag.

Remembering the abolition movement is equally important because it offers us hope and a model for widespread social transformation even where that social change will disrupt the entire economic order. If ever we needed hope that that sort of social transformation is possible, it would be now – in the midst of a neoliberal economy that is causing widespread immiseration around the world.

During this week of remembrance, we would do well to ask ourselves why it is important to remember the slave trade and the abolition movement in our own contexts.

In many states across the country, annual Democratic Party fundraisers are promoted as Jefferson-Jackson dinners to honor the two men often credited as the founders of the Democratic party. A number of states are beginning to drop the Jefferson- Jackson link in the face of increasing interest in racial and gender inclusion.

In the midst of a country where black lives appear expendable and some white people are unable to recognize that memorializing their ancestors should never be done in ways that celebrate the Confederacy and its’ mission of defending slavery – the question of how we handle our past is a question we have yet to effectively grapple with as a nation.

Jefferson’s revolutionary commitment to democratic equality established the foundation of our country’s independent spirit in the Declaration of Independence, in his words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” His writing was poetic and inspirational and his words have served to motivate and encourage generations of Americans to uphold and fight for the principles of freedom and equality as basic human rights.

The problem is, Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves. Not only was their labor and immiseration the foundation for his own tremendous wealth and social position, he carried on a long-term relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. While Hemings left no record of the relationship or her feelings about it, as his property she would have had no choice in the matter.

What do we do with the seemingly contradictory realities that Jefferson was committed to freedom and equality AND that he held slaves?

Of course, it wasn’t just slaves who were excluded from the Revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality. Women were not allowed to own property and were, in fact, treated in many ways as the property of their husbands under coverture laws that cast wives as subservient to their husbands.

And let’s not forget Andrew Jackson who is credited as the first Democratic President and one of the founders of the Democratic party. Not only did he own slaves, he helped usher the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through Congress and oversaw the removal of Native Americans from their lands via the brutal and genocidal Trail of Tears.

Were Jefferson and Jackson heroes or villains? It’s complicated.

History is complicated. Life is complicated.

As a woman, I have to live in a world whose history is overwhelmingly misogynist and patriarchal.

As a Christian woman, I was born into a religious tradition that has sanctified misogyny and institutionalized patriarchy.

As a Christian feminist, I have chosen to stay in my tradition despite this history. After all, given how deeply these problems are embedded in the history of the world, rejecting everything associated with misogyny and patriarchy isn’t really an option.

Christian feminism offers some insight into thinking about various ways to “deal with” oppressive histories.

Let’s start with the Bible.

I love the Bible.

Yes, it is full of violence against women. Yes, most of the female characters are denied voice or their stories are told for them. Yes, there are passages that have been interpreted in ways that have hurt women through the ages. Yes, there are some passages that are simply rude, demeaning to women, and in my estimation, simply wrong (I’m looking at you Paul and pseudo-Pauline writers!).

The Bible is also full of wisdom, and insight, and justice and compassion. It is a text that has shaped history and guided civilizations. It is a text of power and inspiration. I love to study it – on my own, in dialogue with other scholars, and in small groups of people committed to God and justice and to making the world a better place.

Is the Bible oppressive? It’s complicated.

I don’t find the Bible oppressive because I have learned how to study and interpret it in ways that are liberating rather than oppressive. We all interpret scripture. Even Biblical fundamentalists and literalists profess a particular interpretation of scripture, even if they think they don’t. Ignorance or denial of interpretation isn’t evidence of the contrary. Rather, it is evidence of a profound misunderstanding of how text functions, especially sacred texts.

My relationship to Jefferson and Jackson is much like my relationship with the Bible and many of the Church “fathers” who said some pretty horrible things and some pretty inspirational things. I study them in a similar way to how I study the Bible. I search their writings, their actions, and their lives for truths that I find meaningful, inspirational, insightful. I study them for what they might help me discover about justice in our own age. I also study them with my eyes wide open to the injustices that they actively caused and those in which they were complicit.

The problem with setting people up as “heroes” is that people are human and humans are flawed. It probably makes sense for states to rename their annual fund-raising dinners. But it doesn’t make sense to deny or reject Jefferson and Jackson completely. The question that we must continue to grapple with as we seek to shape a more free and equal society is how to live with and learn from our past instead of rejecting, rehabilitating, or glorifying it.

I must admit that I wasn’t particularly surprised by Donald Trump’s comments to Megyn Kelly during and after the Republican Presidential debate last debate. After all, Trump has a reputation for misogyny and for disrespecting women. Ironically, perhaps, his outburst and attack of Kelly exemplify the very political problem that Kelly was attempting to ask Trump to account for as part of his bid for the Presidency.

Interestingly, Trump attempted to deflect attention from his treatment of women by accusing Jeb Bush of having a “problem” with women. This, too, is no particular surprise. Even before Bush’s most recent statement to a Southern Baptist Convention event in Nashville that, “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues,” the group Ultraviolet shared the following five things you should know about Jeb Bush on their facebook page:

Hillary Clinton is rightly shifting the attention from Trump’s misogyny to the larger problems about what the Republican party (and the Republican candidates) have to say about women more broadly.

The comments by Trump and Bush exemplify the Republican party’s “woman problem” which isn’t so much as a woman problem as it is basic misogyny. As I said in a recent post, misogyny is the hatred of women. Something quite evident in the attitudes that attempt to engage in sexual shaming (Bush) and in reducing women to animals and/or their sexuality (Trump).

In an event on Monday, Clinton said, “While what Donald Trump said about Megyn Kelly is outrageous, what the rest of the Republicans are saying about all women is also outrageous.”

Hillary is right. Republican attitudes toward women are not only archaic, they are often offensive, paternalistic, and sometimes veiled in a vaguely Christian religiosity that needs to be challenged and debunked.

Let’s start with the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood in recent weeks, which is not only outrageous, it’s downright misogynist.

Republicans across the board have revived their attack of Planned Parenthood in the wake of a campaign by the anti-abortion group “Center for Medical Progress” which has been releasing secretly taped and heavily edited videos intended to manipulate the public’s emotions rather than talk about women’s health.

Fewer than 1% of women place their children for adoption. The decision to continue an unplanned pregnancy is a decision to raise a child.

Only women get pregnant. Getting pregnant, having babies, and raising children affect women’s health.

The facts are that Planned Parenthood is a significant provider of affordable women’s health care, particularly for poor women, in this country. 78% of their patients have incomes at or below 150% of the poverty level. One in five women in the country will use Planned Parenthood’s services at some point in her life.

Abortions make up only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services.

One-third of Planned Parenthood’s services consist of providing contraception and they provide contraception to 80% of their patients.

More than a third of their services attend to the testing and treatment of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) which impact women differently from men and can cause sterility and neonatal death if untreated.

The Republican attack on Planned Parenthood is political. It is intended to play to a pro-life constituency and is largely couched as a concern over abortion but Republican dislike of Planned Parenthood goes much deeper than abortion. It’s about the desire to control women’s sexuality and women’s bodies. Single mothers and sexually active teens are topics for shaming and control in too much conservative political rhetoric. The Republican concern over Planned Parenthood is also a concern over providing contraception to women who conservatives, often Christian conservatives, don’t think should be having sex.

The median age that Millenials become sexually active in 17. Planned Parenthood is not causing them to become sexually active, Planned Parenthood is just concerned with making sure they have access to good and accurate sex education and to contraception, including protection from STDs.

These are women’s health issues. Planned Parenthood didn’t invent sex or abortion. But they are responding to the reality of women’s reproductive and sexual health needs better than any other provider in the country. Trying to control women’s sexuality by defunding Planned Parenthood is just one illustration of the problem of misogyny that plagues Republicans.

Anyone who truly wants to reduce the abortion rate in the United States should be rushing to increase the funding of Planned Parenthood so that more women will have access to safe and effective contraception. More money for Planned Parenthood wouldn’t increase the number of abortions in the country, it would decrease the number.

The best avenue for reducing abortions is not bullying women into not having them, it’s helping provide better health care, sex education, and access to contraception so that we reduce the unplanned pregnancy rate.

Today I have been working on explaining and documenting the history of misogyny and patriarchy in the church as backdrop for understanding the contemporary debate about abortion in the US.

Not only is navigating the history of misogyny exhausting, it’s given me a headache too!

I think it is easy for many Christians to forget how misogynist our tradition has been. Particularly if we worship in communities that accept women pastors and lay leaders.

Misogyny is defined as the “hatred of women.” It’s a pretty bold claim to say that there are elements of our history and our culture that actively express a “hatred” of women. Many people find that language too extreme and would prefer “softer” language – discrimination, prejudice, condescension, disregard, perhaps even objectification (seeing women as sexual objects rather than as fully human equals).

The thing is, throughout history many historians, philosophers, political leaders, and prominent theologians have treated women is demeaning and abusive ways. There is nothing “soft” about the sentiments expressed by many male philosophers and theologians. Nor is there anything “soft” about the social control of women that often accompanies misogynist and patriarchal attitudes.

Here are some of the texts I’ve been working with today:

Tertullian (early 3rd c. CE) – You are the Devil’s gateway. It is you who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree. You are the first who deserted the divine law. You are the one who persuaded him whom even the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is death, even the Son of God had to die. . .

Augustine (late 4th – early 5th c. CE) – The woman does not possess the image of god in herself, but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned as a helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God, just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.

Barth (early 20th c. CE) – The covenant creation dictates a certain order, a relation of priority and posteriority, of A and B. Just as God rules over creation in the covenant of creation, so man rules over woman. He must be A; he must be first. She is B; she must be second. He must stay in his place. She must stay in hers. She must accept this order as the right nature of things through which she is saved, even if she is abused and wronged by the man.

I use these quotes when I teach my students about the misogyny that is embedded in the development, history, and theology of Christianity. These quotes unambiguously establish women as not only inferior to men and removed from God but as the very “Devil’s Gateway.” It seems pretty clear that these men did not think much of women. These statements even seem to be a little “hatey,” don’t you think?

These kinds of ideas – that women are the root of sin and evil, that women must be subservient to their husbands, that women must accept our inferior status in life – all of these ideas are rightly understood as part of a misogynist tradition in Christianity, a tradition that has contributed to larger social attitudes and behaviors in society that collectively express a fairly serious “hatred” of women.

Unfortunately, these misogynist attitudes are not just a part of Christian history, they continue to function in influential ways in contemporary Christianity.

I recently wrote about the offensive ideas about women that some Orthodox Christians hold in the ecumenical movement. But misogynist ideas about women, women’s social roles, and women’s leadership in the church are also alive and well in conservative and some evangelical circles too.

Controversial pastor Mark Driscoll who started the mega church Mars Hill in Seattle said this about women, “Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture.”

And, of course, who can forget the Pat Robertson gem from 1992, “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

While misogyny is deeply embedded in the development, history, and theology of Christianity, this does not mean that Christianity is inherently misogynist or patriarchal. It is human beings who shape attitudes and beliefs about human nature, the sacred, and our religions through our teachings and our practices. And it is human beings who have created patriarchal church structures and misogynist theologies. The real danger of these misogynist theologies lies in the way that they shape attitudes about women and the way that women can (and even should) be treated.

Another way in which this hatred of women has manifested in our society is in the double-standard that exists between expectations about men and women’s sexual behavior. While some churches may preach against sex before marriage, it is only women who are truly expected to comply. Women who have sex outside of marriage are labeled in many ways – whore, promiscuous, slut, tramp, harlot, strumpet, bimbo, floozy, hussy, tart, trollop, jezebel, and referred to as “loose” or “fallen.” We do not have parallel words for men.

Because Christianity has played an important role in shaping cultural attitudes about pregnancy, abortion, and the sacredness of life (among other things), it is important to recognize the ways in which the Christian tradition and its theological ideals have been influenced by misogyny and patriarchy so that we can reshape our beliefs and practices to recognize women’s full humanity, women’s moral agency, and the fact that women are equally loved by God.

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Christian social ethics begins with an understanding that the call of Micah to a life of justice, love, and humbleness is also the call of following Christ in the world. If you are interested in living with integrity and faithfulness, exploring Progressive Christianity, justice, and social change - I hope you will consider following this blog and talking with me about the issues raised here.

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